You can stand me up at the gates of Hell,
but I won’t back down.
Tomorrow, I turn twenty-five.
Twenty-four was a year that I truly wasn’t sure was ever going to end, or that I was going to make it out alive (maybe a little dramatic, but if you know, you know!). In the past year, there have been so many opportunities for my soul to be chipped down, mangled, and worked to the bone; moreover, that’s exactly what has happened in so many ways. From losing family to sickness/death, to losing relationships and life-long friendships due to various unfortunate reasons, to living with physically and mentally paralyzing depression for a season, to saying what felt like hundreds of goodbyes to people that I love and moving to a new city/new state, to starting a brand new career with no experience or training and living completely paycheck to paycheck for a stint, to simply having to call a new crew of people “HOME” — this past year has been more than a lot. And until recently, there were more days than not when my soul felt the toll that all of those things alone, much less combined, take on a person.
As I sit and reflect on what the past year has violently and rudely thrown in my face — all the goodbyes and the hellos, all the death and the life, all the depression and the abundance — what continuously comes to mind is Psalm 23. David, the author, makes this claim that “The Lord is my shepherd”, as he then goes on to make more claims about what exactly his Shepherd is going to do. He talks about the Lord “restoring [his] soul”, and not having to be afraid of any evil because “in the valley of the shadow of death [the Lord] is with [him].”
The reality that David presents here in his analogy is that as a sheep, I’m going to get stuck in thickets, and I’m going to walk through darkness, and there will be terribly frightening things that I encounter. That is simply my reality.
However, an even larger reality is that my Shepherd is with me; and he leads me, guides me, and knows fully what is going on — while I’m quivering beside him, losing my mind and crumbling.
In both of those realities, still the most beautiful thing about this psalm to me is the promise within. David tells me that my Shepherd is going to “restore my soul“. He will restore my soul from the pangs of death, abandonment, break-ups, goodbyes, and every other piece of pain. He will restore every single one of the hollowed out spaces in my soul that have been left from the hard things of everyday life. He’s already started, and I have this deep-seated hope in the day that my joy will be complete and there won’t be any more pain, and every single thing will be made new and restored.
So as I sit on this back porch — drinking some incredibly average hazelnut Keurig coffee, and listening to my morning porch playlist — I find myself tearfully thankful; not necessarily for all the hard (yet), but thankful for the promise that I have that my God is and is going to continue restoring my soul. There is no amount of sorrow or pain from this past year that will ever overthrow the joy of a son of The King.
Whatever year twenty-five has in store, I engage it knowing that my God is with me, and believing that the day is coming oh-so-soon when he will fully and completely restore my soul.
I’m thankful for all of the people that the Lord has put in my path through the valley of the shadow of death that have kept the process of restoration a reality for me, both in Texas and in Colorado. You know who you are.
If you read this and you resonate with feeling the weight of life and loss and anxiety and depression, I am on your team. I hope so badly that it gets lighter and that you get to come up out of the water for a good, deep, restorative breath. And until the time comes that that happens, I challenge you to fight like hell to believe that your shepherd is with you, and he will restore your soul. You are not alone in the dark. You’re not, you’re not, you’re not.
Objectivity 